Introduction

Recently, we've had a chance to take a look at a pair of GIGABYTE motherboards that really cater to two different markets. If you're into the overclocking side of things, the GIGABYTE Z87X-OC Force we looked at in the middle of January could be a fantastic option for you.

If that's a little bit too much for you though, and you're looking for something a little more basic and cheaper, then the Thunderbolt wielding GIGABYTE Z87Z-UD5TH might be a better option.

Today, we've got something a little bit different with the GIGABYTE G1.Sniper Z87, which is aimed more at the gamer market. It's also the first motherboard we've looked at which uses the GIGABYTE AMP-UP Audio technology that we got to preview towards the middle of last year. If you haven't had the chance to look at that article, and want to know more about it, then we highly recommend you take a look. However, we'll talk about it again when we take a closer look at this motherboard.

There's not a whole lot more that needs to be said about what exactly we're dealing with today. So, with that said, we can move forward and get straight into looking at the GIGABYTE G1.Sniper Z87 package.

Package

Taking a look at the front of the box, you can see the board is part of the G1 Killer series, which of course is targeted towards gamers. You can see the model and the fact that it's based on the Z87 chipset quite clearly. Across the bottom you can see some of the major features, and the majority of them are of course focused on the audio extras. Along with that though, you can also see mention of Killer E2200 Networking, and Black Solid Capacitors.

Turning the box over, you can see a picture of the board and a lot of the major features are covered again, albeit in a bit more detail this time. You can again see that the majority of the features are related to audio, with the AMP-UP feature, Sound Core 3D with Gold Plated Shielding, High End Audio Capacitors, Gain Switches, Audio Noise Card, Gold Plated Connectors for the Audio Jacks, and the Coaxial Connector, along with the DisplayPort and HDMI connector. We'll take a closer look at some of the other major features when we look at the board on the next page.

When it comes to the bundle, there's not a whole lot going on. You can see there's really not much outside of the normal additions, which include paperwork, Driver CD, four SATA cables, SLI Bridge, and an I/O shield to round things off. You can see instead of GIGABYTE throwing a whole lot into the bundle, based on the box images above, most of the effort has gone into the board itself.